Cracking the Leadership Code with Alain Hunkins
Alain Hunkins is the Managing Director of Hunkins Leadership Group and Leadership Development Consultant at AlainHunkins.com. He is also Senior Facilitator at Eagle’s Flight, futurethink, and The Energy Project, as well as Senior Consultant at JMReid Group. He chats with Kevin Monroe about his bestselling book, Cracking the Leadership Code: Three Secrets to Building Strong Leaders, and shares insights about becoming great stewards in the workplace in light of current events.
Leader of the Future
Many leaders see people as human resources instead of human beings. They are still stuck in the industrial age mindset, Alain says. The leader of the future must be able to embrace both masculine and feminine archetypal energies in order to effectively carry out their duties. Alain gives examples of good and bad leadership during the current global crisis. He and Kevin also comment on the civil unrest within America, talk about their privilege as white men, and call for systemic change in order to combat racial oppression.
Qualities that Leaders Need to Have
Kevin cites Alain’s book about the four important characteristics of good leaders according to a study involving 1700 CEOs from 64 countries and 18 industries. The four characteristics are: communicative; collaborative; flexible; and creative. These soft skills are essential for today’s leaders because the industrial-age, hierarchical, command, and control style of leadership doesn’t work anymore. Leaders should instead see themselves as facilitators of groups.
The Three Secrets
The three secrets to building strong leaders are connection, communication, and collaboration, in that order. Alain describes the model for these principles as concentric circles that include each one before it. Rather than a title or position, leadership is a relationship between one who chooses to lead and one who chooses to follow. The quality of that relationship is based on the quality of their connection, communication, and collaboration. In addition, the person who chooses to follow has the final say about the quality of the relationship, and only 23% of leaders understand this. Alain details each secret, how they intersect with one another, and how they apply currently.
The Three Trends
The three trends of the current working world are choice, transparency, and technology. These trends largely make up the key differences between the 21st and 20th centuries: past generations were not aware that they had a choice in following a leader, neither were they able to access the technologies that we have today. Subsequently, there was barely any demand for transparency.
Alain calls on leaders to become familiar with discomfort; if you’re always comfortable then you’re not growing.
Resources
Alain Hunkins on LinkedIn
Email: alain@alainhunkins.com
Cracking the Leadership Code: Three Secrets to Building Strong Leaders
Kevin Monroe on LinkedIn | Twitter
Email: kevin@higherpurposepodcast.com
Call or text Kevin: 678-744-5111Join the community: KevinDMonroe.com/decade